In the last thirty years we have seen childhood obesity rates double, and adolescent obesity rates quadruple in the United States. As obesity rates have gone up, so has the number of children at risk for cardiovascular disease, type two diabetes, bone and joint problems, as well as cancer.  Additionally, obese children are at risk for social and psychological problems, for example low self-esteem and stigmatization (Childhood Obesity). According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, most kids in the United States do not meet the recommended daily intake for fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, but exceed the maximum daily intake of sodium. Considering that up to half of a child's caloric intake is consumed at school during the week, it is important to evaluate the school's role in the national childhood obesity rate (Food in School). Schools play a critical part in teaching children healthy lifestyle habits, such as healthy eating and physical activity, which will lower a child's risk for obesity and obesity related diseases. Currently, most elementary schools serve food that has traveled across the country and is wrapped in plastic wrap, or canned, such as corn dogs, chicken nuggets, and sugary snacks. These foods being served are high in sodium, starches, and sugar, and are low in nutrients, vitamins, and whole grains. The issue we face is that most schools lack the budget and the training required to create wholesome, nutritional meals made from scratch, and as a result the health of children is negatively impacted.  

Within the last several years the healthy school lunch debate has become a national controversy. One of the arguments for improving school lunches, backed by First Lady Michelle Obama, is that children deserve nutrition as a commitment to their future. Opposing arguments have been made against improving the nutrition of school lunches by politicians such as Sarah Palin, who states that it is the job of parents to monitor what children eat, not the government, and if school lunches were made healthier it would increase government spending. She also commented that the reforms should be done through personal responsibility, not the government controlling aspects of people's private lives.  Mike Huckabee, former Governor of Arkansas, proposes that the First Lady's reforms for healthier lunches are not so the government can control what meals are being served in schools. Instead he states the reforms are to bring attention to and provide possible solutions to the obesity epidemic in the United States (Pecquet). Regulating school lunches to make them healthier would ensure that children would get the daily nutrition they need, and would teach them to make healthier lifestyle decisions, which would help lower the obesity rate. There shouldn't be a monetary value on the health of school children in America.  Health and nutrition should be the number one priority of our school lunches. In order for children to have an equal opportunity at being healthy and becoming successful, they must be provided with access to nutritious, well-balanced meals, starting in elementary school when development and growth rates are at their peaks.

School lunches started being served in the United States when private organizations were concerned about the health of children in school. Malnutrition was a major issue at the beginning of the twentieth century, which inspired philanthropic groups to provide balanced meals to students. One of the first cities to adopt a national school lunch program was Philadelphia. In 1894, Philadelphia adopted "penny lunches" which was a hot lunch provided to students who couldn't travel home for the lunch hour. The penny lunch was then successfully extended to several other schools in the Philadelphia. Other schools beyond Philadelphia began implementing different lunch programs similar to the penny lunch, but most schools had neither a kitchen nor a dining space, and equipment and remodeling was too expensive. The school lunch program didn't officially take off until President Harry S. Truman signed the National School Lunch Act into place in 1946. The act starts with "as a measure of national security, to safeguard the health and well-being of the Nation's children" and continues to go on and state  "and to encourage the domestic consumption of nutritious agricultural commodities and other food" (Carufel).  This act provided the funds necessary to remodel and buy the equipment needed for all schools to implement a lunch program and provide meals to students. It also ensured that students from impoverish backgrounds would be able to receive low cost or free lunches, that would be provided by farm surpluses. It is important to note the National School Lunch Act uses words such as "health", "well-being", and "nutritious", descriptions which today's lunch standards have strayed from. 

The school lunch program started when many children were underweight and malnourished, and today we face the opposite problem: many children are still malnourished, yet they are overweight. One of the main contributors to this issue are the companies who are providing the food for school lunches. Government subsidies favor large corporations, who only focus on producing the most cost efficient foods, rather than meeting nutritional needs. These are large multinational companies that receive billions of dollars in revenue each year. The top eight largest food service contracting companies in the United States hold seventy-five prevent of school lunch contracts. To put in perspective how large and powerful these companies are, the top three companies alone have a combined annual revenue of around $43 billion dollars (Ziperstein). These large agribusiness companies are able to assemble meals at a low cost because of government subsidies. However, the problem is that these meals are not providing the nutrients students need, especially students who rely on the free lunch program, which could be their only source of food for the day. Healthier foods that are organic are more costly to produce and are typically produced by smaller, regional companies that cannot compete with the prices of larger subsidized agribusiness companies. The goal of school lunches is now business, instead of providing healthy, balanced meals, which was the original goal when Harry S. Truman signed the National School Lunch Act. 

The quality of the food being served to students in school cafeterias is concerning, and puts the health of students at risk. Schools are serving foods that contain high amounts of chemicals such as: pesticides, antibiotics, and hormones. The quality of food served to students could be harmful, and needs improvement. In a study conducted by USA Today, investigators found that the government has been providing schools with beef and chicken that would not have met the safety standards of large fast food chains such as Jack in the Box and Kentucky Fried Chicken. The investigation found that meat going to fast food restaurants are tested five to ten more times than the USDA tests meat that is shipped to schools (Buffenbarger). By sending meat to schools that have lower standards of quality and safety, the risks of students contracting food borne illnesses increases, especially because the immune system of children is not completely developed. Another issue with school meat is that schools are not required to serve organic meat. Meat that is not labeled organic contains high levels of antibiotics and added hormones. In Ann Cooper's ted talk, she states "seventy percent of all antibiotics consumed in America is consumed in animal husbandry" (Cooper). Because of this, kids are being served antibiotics daily through the food they eat in school cafeterias, and this imposes the risk of antibiotic resistant viruses that could be deadly. Expanding upon meat from factory farms, Scully describes the reason why the animals are given so many extra chemicals, stating they "only know the feel of concrete and metal", and that "they lie covered in their own urine and excrement, with broken legs from trying to escape or just turn".  Because of these horrible conditions, they are "kept alive in these conditions only by antibiotics, hormones, laxatives, and other additives mixed into their machine-fed swill" (Scully). Students who eat the meat served in schools are indirectly consuming the additives being fed to these farm animals. Cooper also states that the United States uses 1.2 billion pounds of pesticide every year, and that because of this, the average American, including school children, are consuming an estimated five pounds of pesticide a year (Cooper). Serving food to children that is full of chemicals puts students at risk for diseases. The safety and health of students should be the main priority of school lunches and to ensure this, schools should serve organic food.

When school cafeterias serve meals that are high in calories and high in sodium, they are contributing to the national obesity epidemic. Not only is obesity a national issue, it is an urgent issue for the state of South Carolina, which has the second highest obesity rate in the nation for children that are ten to seventeen years old (The Study of Children). Schools are currently serving meals that contain high levels of saturated fat and corn syrup, such as corn dogs, pizza and chicken nuggets. Ann cooper, head of the nutrition for Berkley California Schools, states that because of the types of food that children are eating  "the CDC, the Center for Disease Control, has said, of the children born in the year 2000 -- those seven- and eight-year-olds today -- one out of every three Caucasians, one out of every two African-Americans and Hispanics are going to have diabetes in their lifetime". The risk of contracting type two diabetes can be significantly reduced just by eating healthy. Cooper goes on to describe what will happen to children if they continue to be fed the same unhealthy foods: "the CDC has gone further to say that those children born in the year 2000 could be the first generation in our country's history to die at a younger age than their parents. And it's because of what we feed them. Because eight-year-olds don't get to decide [ ... ] You know, we are responsible for what kids eat." (Cooper). It is the job of schools and the job of the government to teach children what they should eat and what they should not eat. Currently in schools, children are being taught that what you eat does not have an effect on their body and their health, which could not be further from the truth. 

Another thing to look at when evaluating why it is important that school lunches are healthy, is that for some students of low income background, what they eat at school might be the only source of nutrition they receive. In South Carolina, there are 267,195 households that are food insecure (Profile of Hunger).  Food insecurity can be defined as having "limited or uncertain availability of or inability to acquire nutritionally adequate, safe, and acceptable foods due to financial resource constraint" (Jyoti). Children who come from food insecure families can participate in the National School Lunch Program and the National School Breakfast Program, which provides meals to children at reduced or no cost. In South Carolina there is a daily average of 467,282 students participating in the National School Lunch Program, and a daily average of 267,415 students participating in the National School Breakfast Program (Profile of Hunger). For these students, the meals they eat at school might be the only meals they eat all day, which is why it is crucial that school meals are healthy and nutritious. 

The biggest argument made against healthier school lunches is money. Opposition states that healthy foods are more expensive, which would increase the price of school lunches and government spending. It is true that healthier, fresher food from local regions is more expensive than food from large food corporations that are subsidized. However, by looking at the health costs from eating food from these large corporations that are high in fat and low in nutritional value, eating healthy is much cheaper in the long run. Mark Bittman, column writer for the New York Times, states " Health-related obesity costs are projected to reach $344 billion by 2018 -- with roughly 60 percent of that cost borne by the federal income" (Bittman).  To reduce these costs, you have to look at the base of the problem: people are becoming obese because of the food they eat. It is important to start at schools, and implement healthy school lunches and education programs on healthy eating so that the obesity rate may decline, which would abridge health-related obesity costs. 

It is important to examine what students at the University of South Carolina can do to help fight the obesity epidemic, and guide schools in adopting healthier lunches. Nutrition majors, as well as early education majors would be extremely useful in changing what the students think about their relationship with food. First, nutrition majors can help create lesson plans that teach children why it is important to eat healthy, and what effects food has on the body. Early education majors can prepare for their future job and benefit the health of many children, by teaching this lesson plan at local elementary schools in Columbia. Something that has been shown to be successful in teaching children to eat healthy fresh foods, is working in a garden. By getting students at the University of South Carolina, especially agricultural majors, to help each school set up a school garden, that children will help maintain, would teach them a lot about what healthy food looks like and where it comes from. It would also increase the likelihood of students eating fruits and vegetables in the cafeteria at school and at home, given that they are now familiar with them.

The health of children in the United States is largely at risk because of the types of food they are consuming. Schools play a critical role in changing the way America eats, and by starting with future generations and teaching them how to eat healthy and live healthy lives, this problem can be reversed. Currently the food being served in schools is high in calories, sodium, and sugar, and contains high levels of chemicals, such as antibiotics, hormones, and pesticides. As a result, children are consuming unhealthy and unnatural chemicals through the food they eat and the obesity rate is soaring. As the obesity rate increases, so does the risk for obesity related diseases, such as diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular disease. It is crucial that something is changed. University of South Carolina students can help make a difference and impact the lives of children at local elementary school in Columbia just by donating their time. Students at the University of South Carolina can create and teach lesson plans about eating healthy and the effect food and nutrition has on the body at local elementary schools. University students can also help local schools create school gardens, so that the children can learn that food is supposed to come from the ground, and gain familiarity with fruits and vegetables which will increase the chances of them eating them. 

